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Bodyweight Could the Fighter Pull-up Program be improved?

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Audris

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Hello
I'm interested in learning more about how to increase muscular endurance.
I'm wondering if anyone knows why the Fighter Pull-up Program doesn't use 50% of your max reps approach?
From the examples I've seen online, it seems like you have to use 80%-100% of your strength for every set.
Countless times I've heard Pavel talk about how you should do about 50% of your max reps, so why doesn't this apply for FPP?
Thank you.
 
From: The Fighter Pullup Program Revisited | StrongFirst

The system is intended to be used for four weeks. At the end of the month, take two or three days off and then test yourself.
...
If you run into a snag with this routine, back off a week and build up again.
If you hit the wall again, switch to another routine.

I've always thought of this as a program you run once before moving to something else. Don't think of it as a program to stay on for a long time but rather a blitz, a shock to dramatically increase your pullup numbers. Maybe run it twice a year if you like it. (Speaking personally, I've never tried the FPP, but I've also never had a need to dramatically increase my pullup numbers. If I did, this would be among the contenders for a program I'd follow.)

-S-
 
From: The Fighter Pullup Program Revisited | StrongFirst



I've always thought of this as a program you run once before moving to something else. Don't think of it as a program to stay on for a long time but rather a blitz, a shock to dramatically increase your pullup numbers. Maybe run it twice a year if you like it. (Speaking personally, I've never tried the FPP, but I've also never had a need to dramatically increase my pullup numbers. If I did, this would be among the contenders for a program I'd follow.)

-S-
100% agree. I see FFP as a plateau buster for pull ups (or whatever lift you program it for) as opposed to a permanent fixture within an overall program.
 
Hello
I'm interested in learning more about how to increase muscular endurance.
I'm wondering if anyone knows why the Fighter Pull-up Program doesn't use 50% of your max reps approach?
From the examples I've seen online, it seems like you have to use 80%-100% of your strength for every set.
Countless times I've heard Pavel talk about how you should do about 50% of your max reps, so why doesn't this apply for FPP?
Thank you.
Indeed what the others that have responded to you is correct. FPP is a great plateau buster. That being said... you say that you are interested in muscular endurance; I suppose it depends upon what you define as muscular endurance and where you currently are at, but working up to the 25RM FPP (by various and whatever means possible) would count as muscular endurance in my books...
 
Hello
I'm interested in learning more about how to increase muscular endurance.
I'm wondering if anyone knows why the Fighter Pull-up Program doesn't use 50% of your max reps approach?
From the examples I've seen online, it seems like you have to use 80%-100% of your strength for every set.
Countless times I've heard Pavel talk about how you should do about 50% of your max reps, so why doesn't this apply for FPP?
Thank you.
Welcome @Audris
Apart from FPP being a challenge block, you could also use this approach for long term use, as laid out by Dan john

3RM plan with weights, and possibly using not an actual grinding 3RM, but a 5RM or so -- and only 3x per week.

Same could apply to your 5RM plan: I think @Steve W. has commented that it might be best to be able to do 5 smooth reps before starting (so an actual 8RM or so)
 
Indeed what the others that have responded to you is correct. FPP is a great plateau buster. That being said... you say that you are interested in muscular endurance; I suppose it depends upon what you define as muscular endurance and where you currently are at, but working up to the 25RM FPP (by various and whatever means possible) would count as muscular endurance in my books...
By increasing muscular endurance I mean adding more reps. I'm currently able to do 30 pull ups and I'm looking for alternatives to GTG since I don't have a pullup bar available 24/7.
 
By increasing muscular endurance I mean adding more reps. I'm currently able to do 30 pull ups and I'm looking for alternatives to GTG since I don't have a pullup bar available 24/7.
Maybe the Recon Con Pullup is something for you:
 
By increasing muscular endurance I mean adding more reps. I'm currently able to do 30 pull ups and I'm looking for alternatives to GTG since I don't have a pullup bar available 24/7.
If you can do 30 then the 25FPP would be good for you. It’s a lot of pull-ups mate, and I’m sure when done you would be able to do more than 30 in a set.
I have had good results doing weighted pull-ups, in that it has increased my b/w RM...
 
If you can do 30 then the 25FPP would be good for you. It’s a lot of pull-ups mate, and I’m sure when done you would be able to do more than 30 in a set.
I have had good results doing weighted pull-ups, in that it has increased my b/w RM...
I've also experimented with weights a little and I must say I did get some results, but this reminds me of something Jujimufu said recently in his video, he said - ''when you're a beginner there's a lot of ways that work, you can do just about anything and it'll work. As you get more advanced you find more things that don't work'' So I'm not sure if I got progress because of adding weights or it was simply because I was doing something.

Maybe the Recon Con Pullup is something for you:
Thank you. I must say this program is very similar to FPP. In the sense that it has same amount of sets, same amount of rest days and similar approach to 80%-100% effort for each set. So I might as well ask the same question for this program - why not 50%?

I'm sure we'd all love to see a video of that if you have or can take. That's a lot of pullups.

-S-
Sure why not. I might upload a video as a reply to this topic.
 
Hello,

+1 to the above.

I built my "high rep" pull ups (25 in a set, far from failure) using GTG. This is relatively easy to maintain. I do 1 set of 25 everyday before my training. This maintains local muscular endurance, but once you do it on a regular basis, there is little to no strength gains.

However, I got huge benefits from weighted pull ups to gain strength (multiple sets of 2 with my 5RM). Several protocols can be used that way (Bear, EMOM, etc...). This would be by far my first choice to gain strength, the sustainable way.

If weights are not available, an alternative to gain strength (which still would be less effective than weighted pull ups) could be to do several sets (up to 5), to technical failure (not complete failure), with no more than 30s of rest. As sets are performed, number of repetitions will decrease. This will exhaust both slow twitch and fast twitch. It can be taxing if done more than 2 or 3 times a week though

Kind regards,

Pet'
 
I've posted before but I'll repeat briefly - I made good progress towards a rep goal by doing only weighted work that kept the volume lower for all my training except one day per week, and did a near-max rep workout on that one day - warmup set, near-max set, backoff set, and done.

-S-
 
I've posted before but I'll repeat briefly - I made good progress towards a rep goal by doing only weighted work that kept the volume lower for all my training except one day per week, and did a near-max rep workout on that one day - warmup set, near-max set, backoff set, and done.

-S-
Thinking your protocol would be a good way to make progress while keeping elbows,shoulders, other areas healthy.
 
Thinking your protocol would be a good way to make progress while keeping elbows,shoulders, other areas healthy.
That was the idea, to achieve a high-rep pullup goal by training lower reps than usual but with heavier, but still not heavy, weights. The end result for me was 19 or 20 reps, can't remember which right now, holding a 20 lb dumbbell between my feet.

Training was generally about 50% of current weekly near-max reps but with heavier weight to make the efforts more like 65-85%, e.g., mostly using 12, 16, and 20 kg kettlebells. E.g., if I was up to doing 14 reps in my weekly near-max at bw + 20 lbs, then training would be sets of 5 - 9 reps with bw + 25 to 45 lbs. I liked it, thought it worked well.

I also like the idea of using chinup sets as a backoff set to pullup sets. In training, it was typically 3-4 total sets per session, 1-2 of which were chinup grip. Specialized variety.

-S-
 
I had a workmate before who we jokingly called murphy since he was like murphy's law personified

"I have an idea how to make such program better"

What always happened was it ended up worse.

The lesson here, there are things best left untouched and followed to the letter
 
I'm doing weighted pullups for most of my time with Plan Strong. Before TSC I'm switching to FPP 5x/week and it works well. But, what I've noticed, that in my max-rep pull ups (over 20) it's my forearms, biceps and grip being pumped and tired, but I feel like my lats could do more reps. Any ideas of working on that?
 
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